"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt

Smear Campaign

Well, it's good to see that the former CIA employee is now worried about the war on terror. But it's a bit late. On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Johnson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times "The Declining Terrorist Threat", in which he argued that Americans were "bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism" and, in truth, had "little to fear" from terrorism. And, in turn, he rebuked his former colleagues in the national security bureaucracy for using the "fiction" of the terrorist threat to pump up theibudgets.

With the rightwing smear machine gearing up to try to draw attention from the treasonous behavior of prominent White House officials who participated in the outting of CIA undercover officer, Valerie Plame, it is time to look back and determine who was right on Iraq? Me or the President?

The rightwing is resurrecting an op-ed I wrote in July 2001. I stand by the full article. It is still relevant today. I am accused, incorrectly, of ignoring the threat of terrorism. In fact, I correctly noted that the real threat emanated from Bin Laden and Islamic extremism.

President Bush, for his part, ignored the CIA warning in August of 2001 that Al Qaeda was posed to strike inside the United States.